Tag Archives: government

by starediting | September 18, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS – 154

OBAMA’S SCORECARD – PART 2

It will soon be six years since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The traditional way of evaluating a president is to judge how he has done as a leader to solve problems concerning the economy, national security, and foreign policy. We could do that here, but that wouldn’t be addressing what President Obama has been doing. To be fair, he should be scored on what he has been working to accomplish. To do that, we have to use the tasks relevant to progressive goals, for those are what is important to President Obama and his legacy.

President Obama’s overall goal is the transformation of America. That term means very little unless you examine the steps that are required in the process of transformation. The first step is to marginalize his opposition, the Republican Party, by a skillful manipulation of issues. Remember, the progressive mantra is “the issue is never the issue.” In short, that means you don’t try to solve problems or issues, you simply use every issue to instead attack the opposition. Changing sides on issues or lying about what you said previously about the issue doesn’t matter and happens often.

In Part 1 of this blog I scored Obama on redistribution of wealth and weakening America on a worldwide scale. Read that blog here.

All socialist ideologies require the move of the means of production from the private sector to governmental control. Beginning with Obamacare and moving to micro-managing regulations on manufacturing, coal mining, nuclear power, oil exploration and drilling, and energy use, the president has made an auspicious start but he still has a long way to go. His grade here for advancing progressive programs only rates a “C” minus.

To create a one-party political system run by a progressive elite, Obama needs to destroy the Republican Party and absorb the legislative power of Congress into the executive branch by using executive orders and department regulations. He has made the executive branch more powerful than the office he was elected to fill, but the stubborn resistance from the tea parties and other conservatives has slowed the process and the progressives will probably (hopefully) lose control of the Senate in November 2014. The president gets only another “C” minus here.

To prepare the way to move America into the control of an international organization, he needs to withdraw from foreign bases and weaken the U.S. military forces, which are still the best in the world. The president has announced his intent to cut the manpower of the Armed Forces to pre-WWII levels. The Defense Department, under timid civilian and military leadership, has rolled over and begun implementing manpower cutbacks by informing several hundred captains and majors they will no longer be needed. I’m sure notices to sergeants and others will follow. Majors, captains, and sergeants are the backbone of any military organization. It will take 15 years or more to replace the expertise being wasted. As long as the Pentagon is so gutless, Obama will succeed in diminishing both manpower and weaponry. He gets a “B” plus here.

Unless conservatives, independents, and moderate Democrats wake up, President Obama will eventually get higher grades as a progressive than he ever got during his academic training.

Do you like and understand what you’re reading? Share it with your friends and leave me comments here or on Amazon. I read them! You can also visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. This content and more is available in my latest book, “INSIGHTS: Transforming America.”

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 153

OBAMA’S SCORECARD – PART 1

washingtontimes.com

Domestically, Obama has done this by:

increasing taxes on the top earners
instituting death taxes so families cannot pass on wealth to heirs
put forth regulations to hamper business expansion
raised minimum wages
increased unemployment benefits
expanded food stamp recipients
Obamacare
internationally signing treaties in the area of climate change
taxes on burning carbon
providing payments to the United Nations and other groups and nations that do not share our goals.

Obama, so far, only gets a “C” for his redistribution of wealth goals, but he is making progress.

Another progressive goal is to weaken America in the international arena among its allies and adversaries. A major task in this goal is to destroy America’s ability to project power outside our borders. The value of our word in foreign affairs is at a very low point. No one, enemies nor allies, believes us. They see our will and resolve as non-existent. Our unwise withdrawal from Iraq, Obama’s haste to get us into Afghanistan and then withdraw on a meaningless time table, redlines that disappear and negotiations that have no substance have been effective in reducing our world power. In the president’s drive to diminish American power and prestige internationally, he deserves an “A.”

Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog, coming later this week, which will score Obama on increasing government control; expanding the executive branch; and weaken the U.S. military.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare, Politics

Tagged as government, Obama, Progressive, Republican, Saul Alinsky, socialism, transformation

by Barry Kelly | September 9, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 149

THE GOP NEEDS TRANSFORMING

Is America in trouble? I think so.

How did it happen?

Well, you cannot blame President Obama for everything that’s happened under his watch. The Republican Party insider group is also guilty. The House of Representatives has the total Constitutional power to appropriate money. Everything the progressives have done with Obama’s leadership had to be funded. The government runs on money, our money. The House is supposed to be the place funding requests begin.

Where has it been? Republicans did not provide a single vote to the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Yet they funded every bit of its implementation. Obamacare couldn’t have survived just on the funds that were appropriated when it was passed. The government had to pay for all the overruns, including the rollout. Instead of providing good stewardship of our money, the Republican leadership whined and complained about President Obama’s executive orders and the greatly increased scope and power of the HHS, EPA, IRS, DOJ, and Labor Department but was afraid to use its appropriation to bring Obama’s transforming of America to a near stop.

When they did try to bring Obama’s spending under control by refusing to raise the debt limit unless the president delayed a part of the ACA, the president refused to sign the appropriations legislation with the Republican amendment to raise the debt ceiling. He then began shutting down the parts of the government that would dramatically affect citizens, parts that could have been easily funded. Congress offered to help with authorization by allowing the president to shift funds to where they were needed. He refused and cleverly and successfully passed the blame onto the Republicans for shutting down the government. Not only did the American people accept the blatant blame shift, so did the Republican leadership. Now the speaker of the House and the Senate minority leader are afraid to use their Constitutional powers to defund certain parts of federal spending. With an opposition as timid and as inept as the current Republican leadership, we cannot look to them to act as a check on the growth of the federal government and spending.

The Republican Party leadership in and out of government is afraid to rock the boat. None of them would have signed the Declaration of Independence. (That is my yardstick for judging the courage of politicians.) In my state of South Carolina, several politicians and Republican leaders would have signed. Among them are Representative Joe Wilson, Senator DeMint, now the President of the Heritage Foundation, Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott, and Representative Trey Gowdy. It is this kind of courage that is needed.

President Reagan believed that “Government isn’t the answer. Government is the problem.” Of all the threats we face today, big government is the biggest threat to our freedom and economic growth. The Republican insider group just doesn’t believe this. While the size of government has grown spectacularly under President Obama, conservatives must remember that the eight years of President Bush saw large increases in the size and scope of government. Term limits would fix a lot of problems with the Congress.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80. If you think this message is important, please share it.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, centralization, Conservative views, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions, Presidential Debate

Tagged as Bush, Congress, government, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, president reagan, Progressive, Republicans

by Barry Kelly | July 3, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 123

CUT OFF THE CASH

What is Speaker Boehner thinking? Suing President Obama is a sham. Our founders gave the speaker enough power to defend the Congress, only he is afraid to use it. Instead he decided to whine to the courts. “The President stole my toys.” Come on, grow up here.

The House of Representatives appropriates all federal government expenditures. As the Speaker of the House, he controls the appropriation process. The president has no access to funds unless the House of Representatives appropriates them. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the speaker is afraid he and the Republicans will be blamed for shutting down the government. Nonsense. Essential functions can be funded and it is the president who shuts down the government because he wants it all.

Look at the last fiasco, because the House wanted the president to delay the implementation of a piece of the Affordable Care Act, the president decided deliberately to shut down parts of the government that hurt the people rather than negotiate or comprise. As usual, the teleprompter won the war of words.

The Republican establishment let Obama define the issue. As a result, people blamed the Republicans for shutting down parts of the government. Senator Ted Cruz had to go to the House to persuade the Representatives to use their funding power. The House leadership is not being responsible to their constitutional grant of power nor to the people they go to Washington to serve. The speaker would have us believe he is leading the charge to protect the constitution and curb Obama’s imperial presidency. It is all smoke and mirrors.

If the speaker and the Republicans in the House don’t use their constitutional powers to appropriate or not appropriate funds for the government to protect our freedom, provide a strong, well-equipped military, and grow our economy, they are not worthy of our support or trust. There is not much of that left.

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Filed under Intelligence & Politics

Tagged as boehner, cash, government, Obama, politics, representatives, speaker of the house

by Barry Kelly | July 3, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 135

KING OF CHAOS

Were you listening when candidate and president-elect Barack Obama read from his teleprompter? He didn’t say he was going to lead America to new heights and work to fix the nation’s problems. No! He said he was going to transform America.

That was a new word for most of us. We are accustomed to the soaring rhetoric of politicians. They speak in sound bites and “transform America” did not sound ominous. But it was. We just weren’t listening.

We expected needed fixes to our health care, more spending, attention to welfare programs and a less aggressive foreign policy approach, but most of us did not expect the onslaught on America’s holy grail of individual freedoms, constitutional lines of the separation of powers, and our economic and military power. The usual Democratic Party’s fixation on the distribution of wealth by government degree rather than on the more for everyone by expanding our economy was also understood.

After nearly six years, even the most apology-prone elements of American politics recognize the Obama game plan is new and different. The dumbest members of our society seem to be located in Congress and refer to themselves as Republicans. They, as usual, are out of step with their constituents. The speaker, the only Republican who holds real power, doesn’t understand the rules of the game have changed. For some reason, he is afraid of using his real power, the constitutional power of the House to control the allocation of tax dollars to challenge the president’s expansion of executive power, the inordinate increase of the size and scoop of government, the political corruption of the civil service, the deliberate weakening of our armed forces, and the over regulation of our economy, especially the energy sector.

Instead, the House Republicans, under the Speaker’s leadership, are actively tilting at each issue Obama selects. They just don’t understand this president is not about working problems or fixing issues for the good of the nation. President Obama doesn’t care a smidgeon about solving problems, domestic or foreign.

He is focused on transforming America.

All issues are used to destroy the opposition by making them appear to be on the wrong side of all issues. Obama is willing to change his position on any issue at any time, if the change will help him destroy the opposition and get on with the real stuff of destroying individual freedoms, institutions, constitutional limits, traditional foreign alliances, our capitalist economy, and military power. You see, to transform, you must first destroy. In President Obama’s playbook chaos is good. It makes change easier.

He doesn’t care if you sue him. The law is on his side. It is called Holder Law.

Read “INSIGHTS: Transforming America — Is this what we fought for?”

http://www.factsandfictions.com